Dune Reboot in the Works?

Part I was great. If they can keep part II up to this same level of quality this will hands down be the best adaptation of Dune.

I still like the miniseries because it adapts the first three books, which I doubt they will get to do with these feature films. If people think Dune is hard to adapt, God Emperor is even more so. We will never see that one on screen.

The 1984 version is unwatchable to me.

I'd have to reread God Emperor but I think you're correct.

Questions/points of confusion from a Dune noob:

Is Baron Harkonnen/the rest of House Harkonnen a species other than human? He had a weird bulge thing going on in his neck and there was the scene where he seemed to be lifted up and I wasn't clear what was going on there. They show him in a tub of goo and talk about him healing. How was he injured? I don't think there was a scene showing that he had been injured.

Does the Imperium have any/many non-human members?

Given the potential problems with sandworms coming, why didn't the Imperium build the harvesters to inherently have the ability to lift off? It seems like it would make way more sense to have harvesters that were like the thopters -- smaller, more mobile -- taking repeated small loads than it does to have massive harvesters that can be sitting ducks if a sandwurm attacks.

So I get that House Harkonnen and the Emperor conspired against House Atreides to undermine it. But it seems like an awful lot of effort to get all of House Harkonnen's stuff from Spice World, have a ceremonial proclamation that House Atreides take over, have House Atreides send all its stuff to Spice World, send a bunch of fighters to Spice World to wipe out House Atreides, when the bad guys could just as easily cap Papa Atreides, Mama Atreides and Paul. Other than "if they did that, the plot wouldn't happen," are there reasons why they didn't straight up decapitate House Atreides or do anything less convoluted?

What would have been the rest of the Harkonnen/Empire plan if all things went swimmingly? They were going to convince the rest of the Empire that the Fremen, who were previously reported to be relatively few in number, overwhelmed the forces of House Atreides, the apparent best fighters in the known galazy? Or that House Atreides fell prey to the forces of nature on Spice World? It doesn't seem very likely that it would be bought.

How many other houses are there making up the Imperium? And how many people are not aligned with a house?

Paul makes a big show to demonstrate to his mother how to walk as the Frenem do (which got an unintended laugh out of me). When we see the actual Frenem, none of them seemed to walk that way. Is this a case where Paul was operating on bad information as to how the Frenem operate, or did the director realize it would be reminiscent of Young Frankenstein if you had 30 people walking that way?

Is the Josh Brolin character dead? He just kinda...disappeared.

Are the Frenem in the source material people of color? I am not loving the white savior trope. There's reference to Harkonnen oppression of the Fremen. Was that out of a particular economic desire, or just about being evil. As far as we saw, the Fremen were happy to stay out of the way. Does Harkonnen want to kill all of them now just out of mustache-twirlery or what?

Are Paul's prophetic dreams fixed, or can he/others act to avoid what he foresees? He seemed to foresee a friendship with the guy he killed. So maybe that guy gets resurrected, or maybe he has altered that path.

@Raoul the Red Shirt, I'd suggest watching something a little more entertaining. Paint drying is good, or you can watch some grass grow.

What the hell is this?

With a little more exposure...

I'll have a go at answering some of these. Possible mild spoilers for part two and beyond...

There is no non-human intelligent life in Dune. However, the various factions have in many cases innovated on their humanity somewhat. (There are actually more extreme in-universe examples that we didn't see, such as the Bene Tleilax.)
The bulge in the Baron's neck was caused by implanted suspensors, which allow him to levitate. He was "injured" in the gas attack by Leto - and only survived by levitating himself to the top of the room.

Good point. I can't answer that.

There was no plan to cover up the Harkonnen involvement. They and the Atreides had been enemies for years. It is the Emperors role in things that needed to be kept quiet. And from his point of view, while the plan is aimed against the Atreides, he wishes to weaken both houses. Doing it this way leaves the Harkonnen's up to their eyes in debt.
I also don't think it is that easy for anyone to just "cap" the leaders of another house. Even if that did work the House would still exist, with someone else taking on the role of Duke. Doing it this way allows for the complete elimination of the Atreides.

From memory there are a small number of "major" houses and a much larger number of "minor" houses. There are also other factions such as the Bene Gesserit, Bene Tleilax and the Ixians and presumably lots of other people who are not aligned.

Neither. The Fremen that we seen weren't crossing the open desert, trying to avoid worms.

He's not dead. You'll find out in Part Two.

It may seem otherwise at first but Dune is a subversion of the white savior trope.
You're getting a bit deeper into things now - but unrevealed in the move at least is that the Fremen are trying to terraform Arrakis to make it green. That clashes fundamentally with the need to keep the planet dead, required for spice production and harvesting.

This is also complicated. What was covered in the first movie is only the start of it, but Paul sees multiple possible futures. That he becomes trapped by these is part of the tragedy of his character.

As to the spice harvester question, it's not really valid. It did have the ability to be transported out - that was destroyed by sabotage. If the harvester itself inherently had that ability, that would have been the target as opposed to the carryall. And as that was Harkonen equipment, it was easy for Harkonen's to sabotage and they knew the vulnerable points. As to the design lineage, gorging themselves on us much spice as they possibly could gather was the entire point of their stay there. Form follows function.

Regarding House Harkonnen vs. House Atreides, as mentioned, they've been at war for years. Not touched upon in this film, but talked about in the books (and mentioned in the 1984 Dune movie), there is a formal art of warfare that is goverened by strict rules in order to limit harm innocent bystanders. They call it a "War of Assassins" and the code that governs it is called "Kanly". For one, it has to be openly declared, certain kinds of attacks and methods are forbidden, etc. So Harkonned and Atreides have been involved in an open "War of Assassins" for generations. It's no secret.

Also, regarding whether the Fremen are supposed to be People of Color or not, I would imagine that 20,000 years in the future (when Dune takes place), the racial distinctions and power dynamics we know today will be totally irrelevant and totally different.

That said, the Fremen are distantly descended from a group called the "Zensunni Wanderers" (religious syncretism is a big theme in Herbert's Dune books) and their language is a distant descendent of Arabic.

I should note that although the people in the films appear to us to be speaking English, it's actually "Galach" they speak, which is NOT English, but a distant descendent of various Earth languages (including English).

I really liked it!

Even though I know the plot I was fascinated the whole time. Didn't feel like a long movie to me at all, I was surprised when it ended after they met the Fremen

Beautifully shot, very well put together, the acting was very good, great world building, the ability to show the scale of everything was fantastic

Given that we know what's going to happen in part 2, with this cast and this director I think it has the potential to be excellent

One thing I got a big kick out of was the Hunter Seeker and how it was portrayed in the original Dune vs the nuDune






Filmmaking has come a long way

It wouldn't change the point that the Harkonnen could sabotage whatever harvesters there were. But as shown even the best case scenario would put a huge load of spice and expensive equipment at risk unnecessarily. Under optimal situations, it seemed to me, a loader would have about 5 minutes from when a worm sighting was made to have a carryall dock with it and lift it to safety. Seems inherently better to be more mobile and to be able to liftoff within less than a minute if need be. Having, say, 10 harvesters that can collectively harvest spice at the same rate as a mega-harvester but aren't at anywhere near the same level of risk as a mega-harvester seems (to me, anyway) an inherently smarter play.

Cost savings on large volumes are immense, however. If you have a massive amount of cargo to ship, from an economic sense, it is cheaper to load it on a mega-cargo ship and run it around the southern tip of South America, than to stick it on smaller ships and send it through the Panama canal. The volume of mega-cargo ships presently going through Drake's passage, instead of the Panama canal is so great that Panama and one other Central American nation are busy building a canal big enough to handle the mega-cargo ships.

I get that the mega-harvester would likely be more efficient than a set of smaller harvesters in storing and transporting goods. IMO, that would be more than offset at the risk of losing one megaharvester being a much more devastating loss. Seems to me that there would have to be times when the wurms don't give enough heads' up time to get a carryall to dock and lift, where there's an honest-to-goodness mechanical failure or whatever, and then you would risk losing not just the massive spice load and 26 workers but also the massive piece of equipment. Seems like it's better to have smaller, more nimble ships out in the field taking the spice to the sandworm-free location to then be loaded onto a megashipper. If you happen to lose one, then you still have 9 ships and 20 men rather than having lost 25 men and a larger portion of your harvesting ability.

This is assuming that there is some reason that the megaharvester can't be built with a carryall as part of its inherent design, or that if for some reason it's good to have the carryalls be detatchable that when a megaharvester goes out that it does not just go out docked with a carryall.

But a loss of a shipment just means a higher market price for spice. So, that offsets the cost of a loss of a harvester (not to mention there's probably an insurance payout and/or a tax write-off).

Excuse me what?

They put Aquaman in Dune?!

Yup

So is this movie still in the works?

What do you mean "in the works"? It's already out.

Can't be. Jokes are funny.

It was a dig at the thread title. Clearly the movie is no longer “in the works”, hence my comment.

Wow please use spoiler tags next time

Also I watched this and thoroughly enjoyed it. I initially thought it was going to be a slow movie with tons of scenic shots like 2001. But I think it balanced the grand cinematography with enough plot development and dialogue. By the end, I was honestly surprised that it was already over.

Though, I feel like I need to go back and actually finish the book. I got a few chapters in, lost the book, and then gave up finding it.

Looked under your mattress in your college dorm?

No like I bought it a year ago in anticipation of this movie and then lost it while camping. I'm assuming a bear took it.

Nah, it was probably a boar.

Watched it tonight. I think that it could have used some tweaking here and there but I still found it mostly enjoyable (though I mainly looked for the nods to things that had been influenced by the novel in spots).

Raoul, it might help to keep in mind that the Harkonnens are the representation of all things evil in humans. They exxploit other humans and the environment for their own gain. The Soviet Union's leaders approached things the same way. Neither the Harkonnens or the Soviets gave a shit about ecological sustainability. A good thing for the Harkonnens and the Imperium that the Dune ecology is, in fact, sustainable. Worms could generate spice faster than it could be harvested. If a bigger crawler could get more spice that's all that mattered. Spice was so incredibly valuable that normal ideas about efficiency didn't apply. As someone noted in the book, the Harkonnen approach was to collect as much spice as possible and get out one step ahead of the sandworms.